Should B2B copywriters use long form sales letters on corporate websites?

Ah, the long form sales letter. Such a bone of contention among copywriters. Many will deride their length, saying nobody has the patience to read pages of copy these days, whilst direct marketing copywriters, who test avidly, will tell you otherwise.

When discussing long form copy, many people will picture those get rich quick schemes covered in bold red headlines, where you can earn millions with only ten minutes work a day while drinking pina coladaâ€™s on your beachfront balcony.

With this sort of reputation, youâ€™d think a long form sales letter has no place being on a serious corporate website.

After all, business folks are busy people. Theyâ€™ve got a mountain of emails to plough through, meetings to attend and conference calls theyâ€™re already late for. They donâ€™t have time to wade through pages of copy, or will be fooled by your copywriting mind tricks.

But is this correct?

Perhaps itâ€™s time to take a scientific approach. To stop basing the length of B2B copy on intuition and to find out what actually pulls in the numbers.

Long form copywriting gives you space to answer objections

Long form sales pages have the potential to dramatically improve conversion rates on B2B websites.

One example he gave was how the changes they made to the landing page for SEOMoz increased revenue $1 million/year. Their approach included all the classic traits of a long form sales letter. These tactics would be equally effective on a B2B landing page.

After all, whether youâ€™re selling sparkplugs or software, your website still needs to convey the same information as you would selling face to face. And you wouldnâ€™t tell your sales people to stop talking after three minutes, now, would you?

A landing page should be focused on the customer. It should answer all their questions, counter their objections, remove risk and give proof that you can deliver what you promise. This is a lot to cram into 300 words.

Ultimately, landing pages should be as long as they need to be to win a sale or to trigger an enquiry. Maybe long copy isnâ€™t always the answer.

Like this:

Related

Tags:

Yes totally true.
This days most customers dont read log form letters. Even I sometimes don’t read long letters. Its just a practice that many is doing. So most copywriters tend not to write long letters. But I agree with you, long copywriting gives more answer & explanation. But still others prefer reading short & direct to the point letters.
Nice post. Thanks for sharing.

I’ve tried both long form sales letters and more “conventional” short copy websites for my own website copywriting business. I was pleasantly surprised by how much of a difference there was in my response when I built a more conventional brochure type website for my own business.

I mean, after a year of only being contacted by a few clients I was suddenly getting requests for quotes ten days after my new site was posted. I couldn’t believe the difference it has made.

I think for the most part the long vs. short copy debate is going to rage on forever but for my part I’m no longer sold on it being a necessity for the average business website.

I believe that long copy is great when you get it right, but it’s much more difficult to write than decent short copy is. It’s just a matter of how many hours you have to get it right.